At least one in four people will experience mental distress during their lifetime – and nurses are a vital part of their recovery. Our specialist course will help you develop the unique skill set and confidence to succeed in a challenging yet rewarding career that positively impacts on the lives of patients.

A shortage of mental health nurses in the UK means many of our recent graduates with nursing qualifications were able to secure graduate employment or go onto further study (DLHE 2017).

Nursing education in the mental health field will build on your passion for helping others. You’ll develop a holistic approach to assessing, treating, care planning and supporting people to recover and live the best lives possible. With plenty of hands-on experience throughout your nursing study, you’ll also gain the observation and communication skills to confidently collaborate with service users, families, carers and colleagues. In fact, many of our students secure their first job with a placement host.

Once you’ve completed your course, you’ll be able to get professional status as a registered mental health nurse and gain registration with the NMC.

How you'll apply your mental health nursing skills

You’ll spend 50% of your course building your practical experience through a variety of unique clinical placement opportunities with our NHS partners across London. These include the prestigious Barts Health NHS Trust , Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust, and many more.

We’ve got state-of-the-art nursing skills labs, professional training equipment and a building set up to deliver high-fidelity simulations in areas such as resuscitation and dealing with the seriously ill.

You’ll have the opportunity to contribute to projects at our research centres, including our Drug and Alcohol Research Centre (DARC), our Research Centre for Transcultural Studies and our Centre for Coproduction.

The unique skillset you’ll develop will open up opportunities within mental health nursing, teaching, research, educational outreach, public health, the voluntary sector and the armed forces.

Work placements

Placements are an integral part of the course; half of your time as a student is spent on placement and many people go on to get their first job after graduation in their placement locations. We have excellent relationships with mental health trusts in London – for example, Barnet, Enfield and Haringey Mental Health Trust, and Camden and Islington Mental Health Trust.

We work in partnership with practice placement providers to make sure that your individual learning needs as a nursing student are met and a robust process of quality monitoring of the learning environment is in place. Each practice area has a link lecturer and practice placement information to support your learning.

Nursing today is more flexible and varied than ever, mental health nurses have the opportunity to work across a broad range of fields and the skills that make you a good mental health nurse are transferable to many other areas.

You can work as a mental health nurse across the age-range. Nurses work in services for children and adolescents right up to the groundbreaking work that is going on in dementia care. Mental health nurses are needed in secure facilitates like prisons and special hospitals, in specialist mental health wards, across a host of community settings and in health settings like GP surgeries and Emergency Departments in general hospitals.

There are specialist roles for mental health nurses which range from nurse prescribers, managers and consultants. Mental health nurses are involved in teaching, research, educational outreach, public health, and work with a range of employers from the voluntary sector to the Armed Forces. You can also travel and work abroad as a mental health nurse and some nurses' work in social care and set up their own businesses. Nursing is a 24hr profession; many nurses have flexible hours and shift patterns may include early, late, night, weekend and bank holiday working – with planning you can shape your career to suit your needs and ambitions.

You will need to remain up to date to be an effective practitioner and you may continue your education after you graduate with CPD (Continuing Professional Development). This expectation helps with career progression as nurses have the opportunity to specialise in areas such as dual diagnosis, dementia or child and adolescent mental health.

Nursing is a profession requiring shift work throughout the 24 hour period. Duty rotas may reflect this and will include early, late, night, weekend and bank holiday shift patterns.